Harare Zimbabwe (News of the South)-The Environmental Management Agency (EMA) has been accused of employing heavy-handed tactics in its dealings with artisanal miners and other mining sector players.
The environment watchdog has been facing stiff resistance from artisanal miners who it accuses of refusing to be formalized and adhering to strict environmental observations.
On their part the artisanal miners have come out against the organisation saying it lacks the requisite public relations skills for engagement.
Speaking in Harare during a Minamata Convention ratification event one artisanal miner accused the organisation of using scare tactics every time they visit mining sites.
“EMA behaves as if we are at war with each other. They don’t know how to approach us as artisanal miners because we are open to engagement with them and government but they treat us as criminals”.
“So most of the time we see them we just flee”, he said.
A female artisanal miner said public stigma was one of the chief causes for the continued heavy handed approach to the informal miners.
“EMA has just borrowed from the way the general public views us and approached us with so much negativity that it’s hard for any formal engagement to bear fruit”.
“They should respect us as miners and deal with us with that understanding not take us as mere criminals, because we are not”, she said.
However EMA’s Education and Publicity Manager Mr Steady Kangata said it was just a matter of failing to understand each other that was creating such frictions.
“As EMA we are very much open to engaging the artisanal miners and all stakeholders involved in an open manner”.
“It’s unfortunate that such perceptions about us exists but we will work to rectify that going forward”, he said.
EMA is seeking to ratify the Minamata Convention which is aimed at the reduction of using mercury by Artisanal and Small Scale Gold Miners (ASGM).
Of the 128 signatories to the convention Zimbabwe is one of the foremost having signed the convention in 2013.
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Mercury is hazardous to health but has continued being used by many artisanal and small scale miners on the country for lack of a substitute.
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